Display search results in a tab instead of the side bar

[rfgamaral]

I was talking to a colleague the other day and the only reason he's not using VS Code is because of how the search is implemented in VS Code and I have to agree with his opinion.

Both Sublime Text (which I'm used to) and Atom (the editor my colleague is using) feature a search tab. A search tab displays the results much more clearly given that there's much more space available to display them. Instead, VS Code displays them in a "small" side bar.

Yes, we can resize back and forth the side bar, but that's a bit annoying. It would be nice to have the search results displayed in a new tab similar to Sublime Text and Atom.

[d-akara]

I prefer the functionality of VS Code over sublimes implementation. I don't use sublime much, so maybe this is configurable; however, these are the limitations.

1. I can't simply cursor down over each match and have the file opened as I cursor down
2. It is harder to see just all the matches due to so much extra formatting and context around the matches
3. I often want to hide the side panel, but then go back to the last results again. Not sure how smoothly that will work from another document.

A wider display however could be useful. For example displaying in bottom panel instead of side panel.
Also, ability to capture the text of results would certainly be useful. #17920

[roblourens]

I know this has had some discussion before but can't find the issue right now. I've been toying with the idea of a button to dump the results from the viewlet into a sublime-style editor view, which would solve a few problems at once. Not sure how great that experience would be.

[d-akara]

@roblourens I can imagine lots of people have different ideas of how the contents of the dump should look. Would it be difficult to provide an API so that we could write extensions to do something with the results?

[rfgamaral]

Those are all valid points @dakaraphi :)

My only reasoning for this was the wider display to show the results. Currently it's cumbersome to go through the results (especially when there are many of them) because the sidebar, as a component, is narrow by default.

[d-akara]

@rfgamaral Thanks for clarifying. In this case, you might be interested following this item #2806

[FezVrasta]

I would love to have the search results shown on the bottom tabs where there's also "terminal" "output" and so on.

is it possible?

[maxekman]

IMO, all three options would be nice to have; in the sidebar, as a tab/buffer or in the console area.

[bhat-ganesh]

Is this feature supported yet?

[leocaseiro]

Isn't duplicated of #9435?